Q&A with Chris Link

Plant Addicts is an e-commerce business that specializes in high quality plants and garden décor. The plants come directly from the growers/nurseries and are sent to the consumer. Chris and Richard founded the company in 2017 with the goal of being the best online resource for plant care information. Its blog provides customers with over a thousand articles for trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, edible plants and houseplants.

NM: Why did you and Richard decide to start the company?

CL: Our backgrounds are actually in e-commerce. We took another job at Oriental Trading Company. I was the SEO manager and e-commerce manager there and managed several teams, and Richard was in charge of SEO as well.

We were thinking, well why wouldn’t we try to do the same kind of business. We really like the plant industry, and we had quite a few contacts by that time built up. We thought we could just do it ourselves, so we started it on the side. We would work full-time at our jobs at Oriental Trading, play with the kids and put them to sleep. Then get on the couch and start working on Plant Addicts on the side.

In 2020 when COVID hit, the business went crazy. It got to be way too much to do on the side, so we decided to jump in full time. It’s continued to grow like crazy ever since.

NM: What are some things you’ve accomplished with the business since starting it in 2017?

CL: Growth is the number one thing. We’ve been growing double digits every single year, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. I think our site has come together really well where we offer plant care advice that’s pretty robust compared to anyone else in the market. Then we also utilize technology to help them before, during and after their purchase. We provide advice on chat, email support and phone support. Then, post-purchase, we have quite a few automated emails getting sent out for plant care advice, watering reminders and fertilizing reminders, and it’s specific to each category. If you order a hydrangea, we'll send you a hydrangea care article to make sure that you’re going to be successful growing that plant. We hire experts with 20-plus years in gardening to write the content, and we take a lot of pride in having accurate and trustworthy information, not just chatGPT or something cranking out content.

NM: How would nurseries/growers partner with you?

CL: We work with a lot of different growers throughout the U.S. The main challenge is it needs to be a grower that can ship plants. A lot of [nurseries] can ship truckloads, but very few are able to ship individual one to four order plants at a time through FedEx or UPS. That’s the main way we would partner with more growers, and we’re always looking for more partners. We’re bringing six more on this year at least. We’re always looking for new types of plants as well – looking to expand in the different plant categories. We’re pretty well stocked on annuals, perennials and bushes, but any other plant categories we’re definitely looking to have more partners in that.

NM: When you’re not working, what are some of your hobbies?

CL: Chasing kids and sports and travel. That’s the main three things I try to find time for. I coach youth basketball and softball. I enjoy traveling with family and friends. I usually like to go to the ocean and warmer climates. We’re getting ready for a trip in a couple months to Napa. I do enjoy wine and have a wine blog called Vino Critic. It talks about pairing wine and food, rating different types of wine and different wineries to visit in wine country. When we travel out there, I usually interview some of the farmers and growers and write reviews while I’m out there. It’s just kind of fun for us to do.

FOR MORE: plantaddicts.com